Grit Lab Report

Hi Michelle,

Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!

We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.

We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.

Important note!

Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.

If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.

Okay, let’s get started!

The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.

We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.

Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.

The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.

Regarding passion you picked Stage 4: I have an interest I’m actively pursuing, voluntarily devoting more than 3 hours of “free time” each week .

Regarding perseverance you picked .

As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.

Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.

In week 2, we looked at your interests.

Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.

Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.

Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.

In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.

You said your top three values were achievement, security, and power.

You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.

When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was agreeableness.

You said your top three talents were social, analytic, and artistic / spatial.

We then talked about goal hierarchies.

You said you had a pretty good idea about your top-level goal.

We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.

A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to grad school .

Here is how self-concordant that goal was:

Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.

It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!

Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.

We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:

Work Smart

In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.

You WOOPed!

For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said Build a habit of waking up everyday at 9:30 and go to bed by 1 .

For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said Better life .

For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said Laziness .

For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When the clock hits 12:50 get ready for bed .

Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.

And here’s how much you learned

These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.

The important thing is that you learn something along the way!

In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.

You shared you’ve done daily practice in flute .

We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.

In week 8, we discussed feedback.

Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!

You said you felt Disappointed when receiving critical feedback, and Disappointed when receiving positive feedback.

We then turned to learning about stress.

In week 9, you reported feeling a moderate amount of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being post grad .

We also talked about adversity and failure.

Although related, adversity and failure are different:

Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.

However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…

Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.

And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.

We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.

Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.

You describe the habit you chose as Health .

Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.

Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?

So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.

In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.

Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.

Here’s how you described them:

You also wrote a gratitude letter to Parent .

In one word, you said it made you feel thankful .

One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.

… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.

Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.

Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?

Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.

Clever use of Psychology/metaphor can help you succeed in life.
Interest is something that you develop over time.
Curiosity conversations can keep you engaged
Grit is about perseverance and staying in love with your goals.
Setting if/then goal helps you achieve the goal
Deliberate practice is important
Ask for advicd
Stress can help cognitive abilitu
Rely on systems more than your willpower
Mentor can give motivation and information
Take the 5 minute to look around

In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.

Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:

Sulaiman Yamin
Over the course of the past semester, I’ve grown to deeply admire Michelle’s sense of groundedness and her ability to self reflect. She’s consistently able to deeply internalize the concepts that are taught during the class and then able to implement them into her own life. I greatly appreciate how she has shared her deep passion for law with our team, and it’s apparent she puts in a huge amount of time and commitment into pursuing that goal, which is something I greatly admire. Given that I sat next to Michelle for the entire semester, we had many conversations ranging from mentorship to the way that we were raised. I deeply appreciate her sharing the advice of finding professors who can serve as advisors and provide coaching on career related pursuits. This was something I hadn’t actively done before, and it is because of her encouragement that I’ve reached out to my professors regarding topics of mutual interest this semester. Michelle's Discovery project, centered around the theme of 'Job Career vs. Calling,' provided a profound and insightful exploration into the challenges and opportunities faced by individuals on the cusp of graduation. Her focus on the concept of a 'Superordinate Goal' to use law as a tool for societal benefit was not only inspiring but also a testament to her deep understanding of the role of personal values in career choices. By narrowing her focus to technology and communications law and using WOOP as a means to stay engaged and inspired, Michelle demonstrated a unique approach to career exploration. This not only kept her motivated but also highlighted the importance of engaging in diverse activities to find one's true passion. Furthermore, Michelle addressed the 'Trap of Positive Fantasizing' with practical solutions. Her advice to counter daydreaming with actionable plans underlines a critical aspect of goal achievement. This approach of balancing dreams with pragmatic steps is something that I find immensely beneficial, and I really appreciate her vulnerability during the discovery project.
Lilah Epstein
Michelle’s relaxed demeanor and soft spoken nature brought a really sweet kindness to our group. While seemingly laid back on the outside, Michelle is clearly an extremely hard worker who is dedicated to pursuing an impactful career in law. Though she has mentioned during group discussions that she often puts pressure on herself to succeed, I have no doubt that she will certainly accomplish many incredible things in the future. Especially with the future coming up very quickly, considering Michelle and I will both be graduating at the end of this semester, it was really nice to find someone who relates to my anxieties of what comes next. However, Michelle’s calm appearance towards taking on the next steps in life has made me feel a little bit calmer as well. I have really enjoyed getting to know Michelle this semester and wish her all the best on the next semester to come! Michelle’s Discovery Project was a really interesting dive into the legal profession! With an interest in pursuing a career in law, it was really great to learn how Michelle took some first steps into exploring the field. Michelle shared a really relatable presentation, discussing the difficulties of knowing where to begin when exploring career options, and how that first step is always the hardest. Michelle also did a great job incorporating and utilizing methods we have learned in class for how to foster grit and create a drive to move forward on a project. Her delivery was flawless and I learned a lot about Michelle’s goals for the future. I hope she continues to implement the frameworks we have learned in class in order to succeed in her career of choice!
Stefani Turcios-Moya
Michelle has been a great teammate throughout this semester. She was observant and was a great listener when any of us were talking and sharing our stories or reflections on class materials. Having her perspective during our breakouts were very valuable. It was also a pleasure hearing her talk about her goals for the future and her family. Her commitment and dedication is inspiring. I liked that we both shared that when writing our gratitude letters it was difficult if we wrote one to our fathers even though it was for different reasons. Michelle's discovery project was about exploring the legal profession. I enjoyed seeing her talk about law and her future goals with such passion. She reinforced the idea the importance of sampling to find something that you are passionate. I like how she talked about the ease of falling into the trap of positive fantasizing and I sometimes do that with my goals but knowing ways to combat this is important. Michelle said that she pushed through this obstacle by creating more detailed plans, I appreciated her insightfulness and can also implement what she did for my field too.

We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.

Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?

Drumroll please…

Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.

In any case, grit is not built in a day…

…remember that progress is never smooth…

…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.

With grit and gratitude,

Angela and the Grit Lab team.